Field
This disclosure is generally related to computer networks. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a network node that uses reputation values for a name prefix to determine whether to execute instructions included in a packet that perform operations on a resource of the network node.
Related Art
The proliferation of mobile computing and cellular networks is making digital content more mobile than ever before. People can use their smartphones to generate content, to consume content, or even to provide Internet access to other computing devices that generate or consume content. Oftentimes, a device's network location can change as a person takes this device to a new physical location. This can make it difficult to communicate with this device under a traditional computer network (e.g., the Internet) when the device's new network location is not known.
To solve this problem, information-centric network architectures have been designed to facilitate accessing digital content based on its name, regardless of the content's physical or network location. Content-centric Networking (CCN) is an example of an Information-centric networking (ICN) architecture. However, a typical CCN architecture is limited to forwarding two types of packets: Interests and Content Objects. Interests include a name for a piece of named data (and serve as a request for the piece of named data), but are not ideal for transferring data as they do not include a payload. Content Objects, on the other hand, typically include a payload, and are only forwarded along a network path that has been traversed by an Interest with a matching name, and traverse this path in the reverse direction taken by the Interest packet. Content Objects are also only sent as a response to an Interest packet; Content Objects are never sent unsolicited in a CCN network.
Unfortunately, this typical CCN architecture does not allow custom operations to be performed on certain Interests or Content Objects. CCN network nodes typically process Interests and Content Objects unconditionally, and in a pre-defined way. Some network nodes may be pre-configured to process an Interest by searching through the local cache based on the Interest's structured name, or to forward the Interest via an interface (or a list of interfaces) mapped to its structured name. In either case, a system administrator typically configures, ahead of time, how a network's nodes are to process all Interests and Content Objects that it receives.